Below are some pictures of things we spotted, with some excerpts from Hemingway's The Old Man and the Sea...
Seed?One of my favorite moments was seeing dolphins for the first time. I stopped trying to get a good shot of them because they surfaced for only a split second. Later in the trip I was lying on my back in the net under the bowsprit and heard the faint sound of air being pushed out of a blow hole. I looked underneath me to see a pair of dolphins surface on the starboard side of the bow.
Little Jelly fish
Bigger jelly fish (Portuguese Man o' War, and By the Wind Sailors)
When someone spotted the first jellyfish, we rushed to the side to take pictures, but we soon realized they were everywhere. At the end of the trip there were literally hundreds of them caught in the sargassum as we sailed at the edge of two converging currents.
Lobster Larvae
"Flocks" of flying fish were always a surreal sight. They looked more like huge insects because they were so shiny and sort of hummed over the water. You could only see them if you were already looking out at the ocean because they moved so fast. Anywhere from 5-15 of them would suddenly shoot out of the water and skim across the waves and plunge back in after less than 10 seconds.
In the dark the old man could feel the morning coming and as he rowed he heard the trembling sound as flying fish left the water and the hissing that their stiff set wings made as they soared away in the darkness. He was always fond of flying fish as they were his principle friends on the ocean.
And then of course was the phosphorescence!
...nothing showed on the surface of the water but come patches of yellow, sun-bleached Sargasso weed and the purple, formalized iridescent, gelatinous bladder of a Portuguese man-of-war floating close beside the boat. It turned on its side and then righted itself. It floated cheerfully as a bubble with its long deadly purple filaments trailing a yard behind it in the water...The iridescent bubbles were beautiful. But they were the falsest thing in the sea and the old man loved to see the big sea turtle eating them.
[We were lucky to also see a couple giant sea turtles swimming by the ship on our return to Key West.]
Lobster Larvae"Flocks" of flying fish were always a surreal sight. They looked more like huge insects because they were so shiny and sort of hummed over the water. You could only see them if you were already looking out at the ocean because they moved so fast. Anywhere from 5-15 of them would suddenly shoot out of the water and skim across the waves and plunge back in after less than 10 seconds.
In the dark the old man could feel the morning coming and as he rowed he heard the trembling sound as flying fish left the water and the hissing that their stiff set wings made as they soared away in the darkness. He was always fond of flying fish as they were his principle friends on the ocean.
And then of course was the phosphorescence!
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